Is Architecture Art?

No word is more abused and degraded in contemporary discussions of architecture than “aesthetics,” and John Macarthur’s Is Architecture Art? is a welcome corrective. His nuanced, knowledgeable, incisive writing, and the organization of his book into brief discussions of distinct yet permeable problems – from “standards of taste” to “autonomy” to “the sublime” to “aesthetic education” - will have a long life as a standard resource for architecture students, practitioners, and scholars. Macarthur is more interested in entanglements than answers, so for those seeking the fast-food pseudo-knowledge of serviceable catchphrases, this is not a book for you. It is a book that will reward those who are enticed by the pleasures of a problem well-posed, fascinated by a historical example fully scrutinized, and satisfied by an argument elegantly phrased. * Mark Linder, Professor of Architecture, Syracuse University, USA * The question of whether architecture is an art or not has been knocking about since the eighteenth century. Macarthur wisely does not try to answer it – sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Instead he lays bare the whole apparatus which has not let the question go away, and that has led to there being such different answers to it. In so doing – and here lies the book’s real originality – it becomes a full-blown enquiry, of a kind not previously seen, into the relevance of philosophical aesthetics to the practice of making buildings. Macarthur persuasively shows us why this relationship matters to the discipline of architecture, possibly more now than ever before. * Adrian Forty, Professor Emeritus of Architectural History, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK * John MacArthur combines a thorough knowledge of classical aesthetics and art theory, with all its philosophical implications, with a near exhaustive knowledge of modern architectural theory. This book offers much more than an introduction: it brilliantly and inspiringly surveys and synthesises the question of the status of architecture, and is undeniably an obligatory reference from now on. * Bart Verschaffel, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, Ghent University, Belgium *